The company is a raw material supplier of the ceramic industry and has a long-term commitment to promote a sustainable approach in the value chain.
They are looking for partners within the ceramics industry or other sectors to set up or join a proposal whose core content or a subset would aim at reducing the thermal needs for firing ceramic wall and floor tiles.

Description: The ceramic products have a very great durability and the energy they require (as well as their carbon footprint) during their use and recycling are very low when compared to all the alternative solutions. However, ceramics products are manufactured by firing and, therefore, ceramic products at the beginning of their life are consuming energy and producing greenhouse effect gases. The total balance-sheet of the energy intake and the carbon footprint is however positive for the full life cycle and ceramic solutions are well in line with sustainable development approaches and requirements. The step to be improved is at the beginning of the life cycle during manufacturing. The potential improvement is actually rather large and two research paths can be explored :
1) To improve the thermal effectiveness of the processes
2) To decrease the thermal needs while firing
The first path related to the thermal effectiveness of the processes has been well studied. The second path concerning the reduction of the thermal needs while firing is therefore proposed as key proposal content.
This path is more difficult to investigate and there are important potential improvements to achieve. Thus the proposed idea is to focus initially on the ceramic wall and floor tile, since it represents the largest volumes and therefore the highest market impact.
The key content could be summarized as : reduction of the thermal needs for firing ceramic tiles either by decreasing the firing temperatures or by using less energy demanding raw materials.
The project is expected to gather partners across the ceramics industry value chain.

Partners requested:
RTD Organisation: Innovative paths to decrease the firing temperatures, Innovative paths to use raw materials consuming less energy.
Industry/SMEs: Suppliers of enamels and raw materials for the ceramic tile industry
Industry/SMEs: Technology suppliers for the Ceramics (material preparation, pressing, firing)
Industry/SMEs: Ceramics manufacturers